An energizing moment for the Dodgers

Gabe Kapler and A.J. Ellis led a Winter Development Program session Wednesday on coach-player communication.

By Jon Weisman

What’s happening at Dodger Stadium this week is bigger and more exciting than you realize.

You could say that the Winter Development Program exists to give a Major League tutorial to the 27 invitees, many of whom had never been to Dodger Stadium before, let alone played in the big leagues.

But beyond that, the WDP has also struck me as a major organizational retreat, a moment for the Dodgers’ new leadership to stamp its open-minded, thoughtful direction throughout the franchise.

Each of the three days has begun with a two-hour field workout for the players, and each has ended with a social activity. In between, there have been nearly wall-to-wall sessions (taking place mainly in the Stadium Club) touching on more aspects of approaching the game than you could possibly have imagined.

These haven’t only been for the aspiring players. Coaches, instructors and scouting and development personnel from every level of the team have participated in dedicated talks and conversations, all with specific topics yet simultaneously wide-ranging in their content.

Though he works at the pleasure of president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and the Dodger leadership, it’s impossible not to see new director of player development Gabe Kapler as the engine powering this week’s discussions. Kapler’s level of commitment to progressive thinking and communication, to mental and physical fitness, is beyond unmistakable — it’s practically evangelistic.

Far from being a preacher who can simply platitude a good game, Kapler engineered a program with concrete examples to back up his emphasis on using a stronger mental approach to improve the physical product — the quality of play on the field. The ideals are cloud-nine lofty, but the means to achieve them are laid out in the nitty-gritty details.

Julio Urias #StrongMind

Those details aren’t for me to share, but I’ll give you an indication of what I mean.

Director of baseball operations Alex Tamin made a terrific presentation to the minor-leaguers Wednesday about how the front office uses advanced statistics. To understate the case by a wide margin, you can be sure that the Dodgers aren’t going to judge a pitcher on his win-loss record.

For someone with my background, this was heaven. Having spent more than a dozen years blogging/proselytizing on advanced stats, I thought the session crystallized how phony the Old School-New School debate is, because the advanced stats truly serve an Old School purpose. What could be more traditional than a stat that measures “see the ball, hit the ball” in ways that batting average fails to do, or other stats that truly make player evaluation a meritocracy? And a new stat is only new for a moment in time – once upon a time you had to learn what batting average was, no different from wOBA.

Periodically during the session, Kapler would jump in and interject his ex-player’s perspective on the advanced stats, deflating any idea that these are only suited for armchair baseballers. Repeatedly, it was emphasized how the advanced stats exist to encourage better performance rather than thwart it. Imagine what it means for a ballplayer to know that your crushed liners to short won’t go unmeasured, or that your seven innings with nine strikeouts won’t go unnoticed just because your team’s offense didn’t show up that night.

Well, I did imagine, but I realized, that’s just me. After the session was over, I wanted to know what kind of impact this discussion made on the players themselves.

“Some of it is a little new as far as what they’re really looking for, (but) when you hear Alex and you hear these guys talk about it and you get further in depth about the numbers, you start putting things together,” Dodger pitching prospect Zach Lee said. “I kind of had a little problem with last year, trying to get over some things mentally, when errors or things didn’t necessarily go the right way, rather than taking three or four pitches to reset, kind of resetting right away. And you realize that those things don’t really matter in the long run. Just continue to execute, continue to do things the way you’re taught to do, and things will work themselves out.”

Speedy outfielder Adam Law, who had a .349 on-base percentage at Rancho Cucamonga last year, was a particularly interesting source for reaction. He’s the son and grandson of longtime Major Leaguers Vance Law and Vern Law and was raised on their baseball-card numbers.

“That’s what I’ve grown up with,” Law said. “You score a lot of runs, hit for a high average and you’re going to be successful. But hearing this from Gabe and the other front-office personnel, it really opened my eyes to what they’re looking at.

“The biggest takeaway that I had from that session was probably what Gabe said last, about putting a good at-bat together. I’m no mathematician, and so all of the numbers (can be) hard to make sense of, but if I can put together a good at-bat, hit the ball hard, that’s when (things) will happen.”

(The funny thing, which Law might not even realize, is that advanced stats shine a nice light on his father. In 1985, Vance Law’s batting average was a rather ordinary .266. But in addition to hitting 30 doubles, he walked in 14 percent of his plate appearances and played above-average defense. Put everything together, and according to Fangraphs, Law was the 34th most valuable position player in the Major Leagues that season, one spot ahead of Brett Butler, who batted .311 with 106 runs and 47 steals.)

But an important part of the progressive mindset is the commitment to two-way communication. Not everyone in the world is an easy sell. More than once Wednesday, you would hear someone question whether, in a world where RBIs have been exposed as a charlatan statistic, the Dodgers would no longer appreciate a player who gave himself up to drive a runner in from third in a close game with a grounder to the right side.

The short answer: Those plays will still be valued. Beyond that, it’s exciting simply to see the conversation taking place, to see the levels of mystery and uncertainty peeled away, so that debate can produce enlightenment rather than aggravation, so that everyone is as much on the same page as possible, and without a doubt working toward the same goal.

The phenomenon that I’m describing from the advanced stats session has been repeated time and again over these three days, across numerous spheres of discussion. So yeah, the minor leaguers are getting an education. But really, everyone here at Dodger Stadium is. The Dodgers will still have to prove themselves on the field in 2015 and beyond, but to see them equip themselves for the task, from the top of the organization to the bottom, is a galvanizing feeling.